The arrest count is striking, but the scale of the online infrastructure removed may be the bigger story. An international effort against West African scam networks has resulted in 28 arrests, while technology companies say they removed more than 3.7 million accounts, pages and groups linked to fraudulent activity.
TL;DR: The US Justice Department says its October crackdown led to 28 arrests in Ghana and Nigeria. Binance and Coinbase were among the industry participants, and partners identified more than $11 million in potentially freezable funds, not confirmed recoveries.
The operation, called Joint Disruption Week, brought investigators together at the UK’s National Crime Agency in London during the week beginning October 6. Authorities targeted networks accused of investment fraud, impersonation and other online schemes that reach victims well beyond West Africa.
According to the Justice Department’s October 13 announcement, Ghanaian authorities arrested 19 people and seized 303 electronic devices in an operation near Accra. Nine more arrests were reported in Nigeria. Investigators also identified 117 trafficking victims in Ghana, a reminder that scam-centre operations can involve people held against their will as well as the victims losing money online.
Binance and Coinbase joined companies including Chainalysis, Elliptic, Meta, Google and Microsoft in sharing intelligence or disrupting the infrastructure used by scammers. That collaboration can help investigators connect social-media accounts, payments and wallet activity, but it should not be confused with proof that every suspect used cryptocurrency.
There is also an important distinction in the money figure. Officials said private-sector partners identified more than $11 million in funds that could potentially be frozen. They did not say that $11 million had been seized or returned to victims.
The real test now is how much of the identified money authorities can actually secure and how many disrupted operations stay offline.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: Binance will discontinue its mining pool and related services at 07:00 UTC on November 10, 2026. Miners must redirect their machines before the shutdown to avoid an interruption in mining activity.
Bitcoin miners connected to Binance Pool have a firm deadline: November 10. The exchange announced on October 13 that its mining pool, along with a range of related products, will stop operating at 07:00 UTC on that date.
The closure is wider than the pool’s basic block-reward service. Binance says it is also withdrawing Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, its Transaction Accelerator and several supporting features, including mining pool APIs and hashrate alerts.
For miners, the practical step is straightforward but time-sensitive. Machines currently pointed at Binance’s mining endpoints will need to be reconfigured for another pool before the cutoff. After that time, new shares and hashrate submissions will no longer be accepted or credited by Binance Pool.
There is a financial housekeeping task, too. Binance has asked users to deal with active savings positions and ensure their accounts can receive any outstanding rewards or refunds. Eligible balances will be handled under the relevant product terms and compliance requirements, rather than disappearing automatically at the moment of shutdown.
Binance has described the move as part of an ongoing product review. It has not established in its closure notice that a specific hashrate decline caused the decision, so claims about the precise commercial reason should be treated cautiously.
The announcement does not mean Binance is shutting down its Bitcoin exchange or spot trading operation. It is an exit from one part of the mining-services business, with an immediate operational consequence for miners who still use it.
TL;DR: Binance.US is reportedly seeking up to $100 million from private investors at a proposed valuation of approximately $1 billion. The financing discussions come as the American exchange attempts to rebuild after several difficult years.
Binance.US is reportedly pursuing a $100 million fundraising round as it seeks to strengthen its presence in the American cryptocurrency market.
Bloomberg reported on October 15 that the exchange was discussing an investment at a valuation of approximately $1 billion. If completed on those terms, it would represent a sharp reduction from the $4.5 billion valuation attached to its 2022 funding round.
The discussions have not been announced as a closed transaction, and the proposed figures could change.
Binance.US once competed aggressively for American cryptocurrency traders but faced major regulatory and operational difficulties.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s earlier proceedings complicated the company’s relationships with banks and other commercial partners. As NewsBTC covered at the time, those disputes included an emergency application involving assets connected to the platform.
Conditions have since changed, with US regulators adopting a different approach to digital asset businesses. But a friendlier environment alone does not guarantee that customers return.
Fresh funding could support compliance, technology development and new products, while giving Binance.US greater flexibility to compete with established exchanges and brokerages.
A proposed $1 billion valuation is not itself a completed market transaction, but it is a reminder of how substantially expectations for cryptocurrency platforms have evolved since 2022.
The next challenge for Binance.US will be demonstrating that investment capital can translate into stronger trading activity and sustainable growth.
For now, the fundraising discussions show renewed ambition rather than a finished recovery.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: Binance has launched a P2P merchant referral campaign across around 20 African markets. Referrers and qualifying new merchants can each earn 50 USDT if the new merchant completes the required number of trades and reaches at least 10,000 USDT of volume within 30 days.
Binance wants more merchants sitting on the other side of peer-to-peer crypto trades across Africa, and it is paying users to bring them in.
The exchange launched a new P2P referral campaign Thursday offering 50 USDT to both the referrer and a qualifying new merchant.
The promotion runs from October 8 through November 7 and covers a broad group of African markets, including Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and several countries in West and Central Africa.
The reward is not paid simply for sharing a referral link.
A new merchant has to complete at least 10 trades with 10 different counterparties and reach cumulative trading volume of at least 10,000 USDT equivalent within 30 days of registration.
That structure tells you what Binance is actually trying to buy.
It is not registrations.
It is active liquidity.
Peer-to-peer markets work differently from a normal exchange order book.
Merchants quote prices and payment methods directly to users who want to move between local fiat currencies and crypto.
The usefulness of the marketplace depends on having enough reliable merchants available across different banks, payment systems and currencies.
Africa has been one of the strongest regions for that model.
In markets where users face expensive international transfers, currency restrictions or inconsistent access to banking, P2P crypto can provide an alternative route into dollar-denominated assets such as USDT.
That also creates regulatory and operational challenges.
P2P trading can attract fraud, payment disputes and attempts to move money outside established compliance controls.
Binance therefore requires merchants to go through verification and can impose additional business onboarding requirements.
The referral campaign expands the network while keeping those qualification hurdles in place.
Each referrer can earn rewards for a limited number of successful merchant introductions.
Binance says payments will be distributed after the qualifying conditions have been met.
The campaign is another sign that the exchange still sees P2P as a strategic product even as regulated spot exchanges and stablecoin payment apps expand around the world.
A centralized exchange can offer a deep USDT market, but that does not automatically solve the problem of getting local currency into or out of the platform.
P2P merchants fill that last-mile gap.
The model is particularly powerful in countries where conventional crypto payment rails are thin.
Fifty dollars is not an enormous acquisition cost for a merchant capable of generating repeated local trading volume.
For Binance, the math is simple.
More verified merchants mean more payment options, tighter spreads and a better chance that a user can find someone willing to trade when they open the P2P marketplace.
The campaign is paying for the supply side of that network.
TL;DR: Binance has launched a Meteora spot trading competition running through October 15, with 400 BNB in token vouchers allocated to the main prize pool. Eligible users must register and trade at least $500 worth of MET pairs to qualify.
Binance is using a sizeable BNB prize pool to push trading activity around Meteora.
The exchange launched a new spot competition on October 8 built around MET, with a total of 400 BNB allocated to the main rewards pool.
The event runs through October 15.
Eligible traders must register for the promotion and generate at least $500 in qualifying trading volume to receive rewards.
The largest prizes go to the highest-volume participants.
First place receives 12 BNB, followed by 10 BNB for second, 8 BNB for third, 6 BNB for fourth and 4 BNB for fifth.
Additional BNB is distributed across wider ranking bands, while smaller traders can share another portion of the pool proportionally.
Binance is also running limited reward rounds during the competition, creating extra BNB prizes around shorter trading windows.
It is a familiar exchange tactic.
Newly listed or strategically important tokens need liquidity, and competitions give active traders a reason to concentrate volume in a specific market.
That can tighten spreads, increase order-book depth and make the asset more visible inside the exchange.
The trade-off is that promotional activity can make short-term volume look more organic than it really is.
When users are trading partly to qualify for rewards, the resulting activity does not necessarily represent long-term demand for the token.
Meteora itself is closely associated with Solana’s liquidity infrastructure, giving MET a recognizable ecosystem story beyond the competition.
Binance’s campaign puts that token in front of a much larger pool of centralized exchange traders.
The promotion also shows how BNB continues to function as a customer acquisition and engagement tool inside Binance.
Instead of paying rewards in MET alone, the exchange is using its own ecosystem asset as the prize.
That can appeal to traders who are willing to trade MET but would rather receive something more liquid as the reward.
The competition is restricted to eligible verified users and excludes categories such as market makers and brokers.
Volume generated through certain zero-fee activity is also excluded from the calculations.
As with most exchange promotions, the fine print matters.
A trader who chases leaderboard position can easily spend more on fees or take more market risk than the eventual voucher is worth.
For Meteora, however, the objective is straightforward.
For the next week, Binance wants people trading MET.
Four hundred BNB gives them a reason to look.
TL;DR: Binance is adding four bStocks tokenized securities as eligible collateral across Cross Margin, Portfolio Margin and Portfolio Margin Pro. The assets represent JPMorgan Chase, Eli Lilly, Securitize and StablecoinX, bringing tokenized equity exposure directly into the exchange’s crypto collateral system.
Tokenized stocks on Binance are moving beyond simple buy-and-sell trading.
The exchange has added four bStocks assets as eligible collateral across several of its margin products, meaning users can use tokenized equity positions to support other leveraged trades.
The new collateral assets are JPMorgan Chase token JPMB, Eli Lilly token LLYB, Securitize Corp token SECZB and StablecoinX token USDEB.
Binance is adding them across Cross Margin, Portfolio Margin and Portfolio Margin Pro.
Trading pairs for the assets are also being opened, while Binance Convert will support exchanges involving the new bStocks.
The development is a small but meaningful example of different asset classes beginning to blur together inside crypto trading infrastructure.
A conventional investor normally treats an equity portfolio and a crypto margin account as entirely separate pools of capital.
Tokenization allows those boundaries to become less rigid.
A token representing exposure to a traditional security can sit inside blockchain-compatible infrastructure and, subject to the platform’s rules, be used alongside digital assets for collateral.
That can increase capital efficiency for active traders because an asset no longer has to sit idle simply because it belongs to a different market category.
There are limits.
Binance applies collateral ratios and risk controls to assets used inside margin accounts, and tokenized securities are available only to eligible users in permitted jurisdictions.
The company also states that its bStocks are offered under an approved prospectus in Abu Dhabi Global Market and are not being publicly offered everywhere Binance operates.
Those restrictions underline an important reality around tokenized equities.
The technology may allow a token to move continuously, but the legal security underneath it still exists inside a jurisdictional framework.
That has not stopped exchanges from pushing deeper into the category.
Stocks and crypto are increasingly appearing inside the same portfolios, trading interfaces and collateral engines.
Binance’s latest move takes that convergence one step further.
Users are no longer just able to hold a token linked to JPMorgan or Eli Lilly beside their Bitcoin.
For eligible accounts, those tokenized securities can now help back the rest of the portfolio.
Tokenized stocks have to deal with the boring parts of being stocks too.
Binance has outlined how holders of its Oracle and Marvell bStocks will receive upcoming cash dividends, and the answer is not a dollar payment landing in an exchange balance.
Instead, the net dividend will be reinvested into additional fractions of the same tokenized security.
Eligible users holding MRVLB or ORCLB at the October 9 snapshot will participate in the distribution.
After withholding taxes, fees and other applicable deductions, Binance will reinvest the dividend into more units or fractions of the corresponding bStock.
Onchain holders will receive the adjustment through a change in the token’s multiplier.
That may sound like back-office detail, but it gets to an important question for tokenized equities: what happens when the real company does something that affects shareholders?
Dividends, stock splits, mergers and other corporate actions all need to be reflected somehow in the tokenized wrapper.
Binance stresses that bStocks represent an interest tied to underlying securities and do not amount to direct ownership of the corporate shares.
That is why the dividend mechanics can differ from what a conventional brokerage customer sees.
The token holder receives the economic effect of the dividend through the product structure rather than dealing directly with Oracle or Marvell.
Trading in the relevant bStock pairs is expected to continue, although conversion, deposits and withdrawals will be temporarily suspended around the distribution process.
This is the kind of operational issue tokenization projects have to solve if they want to reproduce more than a stock’s price chart.
Price exposure is the easy part.
Maintaining the economics of dividends and other corporate events across exchange balances and onchain wallets is harder.
Binance’s approach gives the market another example of how those rights can be represented when the asset itself lives inside a tokenized wrapper.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Binance is continuing to blur the line between a crypto derivatives venue and an around-the-clock market for traditional assets.
The exchange announced four new USDT-settled perpetual contracts on October 6 tied to StablecoinX, Viking Therapeutics, McDonald’s and Akamai Technologies.
Each contract can be traded with up to 20x leverage and remains open 24 hours a day.
The new contracts track the price of the underlying equities but do not deliver shares.
That is a fundamental distinction.
A trader holding MCDUSDT has leveraged price exposure to McDonald’s stock through a derivative. They are not a McDonald’s shareholder and do not receive the ordinary rights that come with owning the equity.
Binance settles the contracts in USDT and uses a funding-rate mechanism to keep perpetual prices anchored to their reference markets.
The exchange has capped funding at plus or minus 2% per interval for the new products, with funding settled every eight hours.
Traditional stock markets close.
Perpetual futures do not.
That means there will be periods when the Binance derivative continues trading while the underlying U.S. equity market is shut.
During those hours, traders are effectively expressing a view on where the stock should trade when the cash market reopens.
That can be useful, particularly around breaking news, but it can also create dislocations.
Leverage magnifies that risk.
A 20x position can be liquidated by a relatively small adverse move, even when the underlying company’s long-term investment case has barely changed.
Binance has been expanding its TradFi perpetual lineup throughout 2026, and the latest four contracts show that the product is becoming a permanent part of the exchange rather than a one-off experiment.
Crypto exchanges built the world’s largest perpetual-futures markets around digital assets.
Now some of that market structure is being applied to stocks, with the same always-on trading culture and the same need for traders to understand what leverage can do when the reference market itself is closed.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Binance is making AI a native part of its exchange ecosystem rather than leaving automated trading to third-party tools.
The company unveiled Binance Intelligence on October 5, a three-part product suite made up of Binance AI, Binance AI Pro and Agent OS.
The products target three different users: everyday traders, advanced users building automated strategies and developers creating external agents.
Binance AI is the consumer-facing part of the system.
The exchange says it can generate market briefs, adapt information to a user’s holdings and interests, and surface contextual explanations inside the app.
It launches first for eligible users in New Zealand, with a wider rollout planned.
Binance AI Pro goes further.
The company says advanced users will be able to describe a trading idea in natural language and turn it into a visual strategy workflow without writing code.
That is where the product moves from information toward execution.
Agent OS is the developer layer.
Binance describes it as infrastructure that can let external AI agents connect to exchange data, liquidity and other services.
That raises an obvious opportunity and an equally obvious risk.
A natural-language strategy builder can reduce the technical barrier to automation, but it also makes it easier for inexperienced users to automate bad ideas very efficiently.
Binance is careful not to promise profitable outcomes, and users remain responsible for the strategies and risk parameters they deploy.
That disclaimer matters.
AI can help process information and translate instructions into trading logic. It cannot remove market uncertainty, slippage or leverage risk.
The launch nevertheless marks an important shift in how large exchanges are thinking about AI.
Instead of treating assistants as customer-support chatbots, Binance is pushing them closer to the trading engine itself.
If that model catches on, the next competition between exchanges may be about whose agent layer can understand a user, build a strategy and execute it with the least friction.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Binance has started reorganizing how user balances are stored as it separates ordinary crypto activity from its growing stock-trading infrastructure.
Beginning September 29, non-stock crypto assets held in Funding Accounts are being migrated into Spot Accounts.
The process will happen gradually rather than all at once.
The biggest change comes at the end of the migration.
Binance plans to rename Funding Accounts as Stocks Accounts in January 2027.
Those accounts will then be dedicated primarily to settlement for stocks and stock options, together with a limited set of supported settlement assets.
Binance lists USD, USDC, USDT, USD1, U and BNB among those settlement assets.
Bitcoin, Ether and other ordinary crypto holdings currently sitting in Funding Accounts will instead be moved into Spot Accounts.
Binance says the migration does not change the total value of user assets.
It is an internal account-architecture change rather than a forced sale or liquidation.
The exchange is also redirecting several services.
Assets received through Binance Card and gift-card activity will move into Spot Accounts, while Binance Pay and Convert functions are being adjusted to use the new account structure.
The most interesting part of the change is why Binance needs a dedicated account in the first place.
The exchange has been expanding tokenized stock and stock-option products.
Separating those instruments from normal crypto balances creates cleaner settlement and accounting infrastructure.
That starts to make Binance look less like a single crypto wallet with multiple tabs and more like a financial platform containing distinct account types for different asset classes.
Users may notice operational changes during the migration.
Some recurring payment or Convert settings that rely specifically on Funding Accounts may need to be updated as those functions move elsewhere.
Historical transaction labels will remain in place.
The migration is expected to continue through January, so not every user balance will necessarily move at the same time.
Binance announced the plan last week.
September 29 is when the operational transition begins.
The destination tells the bigger story.
Crypto is being consolidated into the Spot Account.
The old Funding Account is being cleared out to make room for stocks.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Ethena is pushing the trading strategy behind USDe beyond crypto assets and into tokenized stocks.
The protocol plans to use Binance bStocks as spot exposure while taking offsetting positions in equity perpetual futures, extending the delta-neutral structure that has historically supported USDe into traditional equity markets.
Ethena’s model has always depended on balancing long and short exposure.
If the protocol holds an asset while shorting a corresponding derivative, directional price movements can largely offset one another.
The return comes instead from the economics around that hedge, including funding and basis.
Until now, that model has been closely associated with crypto assets.
Tokenized equities create a new pool of potential spot collateral.
Binance’s bStocks represent interests linked to underlying U.S. securities held with regulated custody arrangements.
Ethena can hold those tokenized instruments while hedging their market exposure through equity perpetual futures.
The goal is not to speculate on whether Nvidia, Apple or another stock goes up.
It is to capture the spread between the tokenized spot asset and derivative market while keeping net directional exposure controlled.
That matters because USDe is often described simply as a synthetic dollar.
Underneath the token is a portfolio of positions, collateral and hedges that has to remain robust across very different market conditions.
Adding equities diversifies the available basis trades.
It also creates new operational questions.
U.S. equities have defined market hours even when tokenized versions and perpetual futures trade around the clock.
Corporate actions, custody arrangements, price feeds and weekend liquidity can behave differently from crypto markets that never close.
Binance says its bStocks are backed 1:1 by underlying securities, but holders do not directly own conventional shares in the same way they would through a brokerage account.
Ethena therefore gains a new source of potential yield and diversification while also adding another layer of market structure to manage.
The move is a sign of how quickly tokenized equities are moving beyond simple trading.
They are becoming collateral, portfolio components and now part of the machinery supporting crypto-native dollars.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
**ID:** B25-02
**Site:** Bitcoinist
**Status:** READY
**Author:** Bitcoinist Editorial Team
**Focus Keyword:** Hyperliquid
**Image Keyword:** Exchange
**Category:** Altcoins
**Tags:** Binance, Hyperliquid, HYPE, Spot Trading, Exchange
**Primary Source:** https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/
Hyperliquid built much of its reputation without depending on traditional centralized exchange infrastructure.
Its perpetual trading platform and native chain created a large user base directly onchain, while HYPE became central to the ecosystem’s governance and economics.
A Binance spot listing changes the distribution picture.
Users no longer need to interact directly with Hyperliquid or another existing venue to gain spot exposure to the token.
Binance says the listing fee was zero BNB.
Withdrawals are expected to open at 11:00 UTC on September 25.
The TRY trading pair is restricted to users with the relevant Binance TR verification.
HYPE has been given Binance’s Seed Tag.
That label is applied to projects the exchange considers innovative but potentially more volatile or risky than established assets.
Users wanting to trade Seed Tag tokens must periodically pass Binance’s risk quizzes and accept additional terms.
That does not mean Binance is making a judgment that HYPE is unsafe.
It is a reminder that exchange access and investment risk are two different things.
The listing is still strategically significant for Hyperliquid.
The protocol has spent years proving that a decentralized exchange can generate substantial trading activity without simply recreating a centralized venue onchain.
Now its native token is getting distribution through exactly the kind of centralized exchange that Hyperliquid competes with for traders.
There is a certain irony in that.
But from a liquidity perspective, the logic is straightforward.
More venues mean more ways for traders to enter and exit HYPE positions.
Whether the listing changes the long-term economics of Hyperliquid is another question.
It certainly expands the number of people who can trade the token without ever touching Hyperliquid itself.
*This article was written by the News Desk and edited by [Samuel Rae](https://bitcoinist.com/author/samuelrae/).*
Binance is broadening corporate-action support across its bStocks lineup, adding cash-dividend processing for four leveraged ETF products.
The supported tokens track SOXS, MUU, TQQQ and SQQQ.
Binance says eligible holders will receive cash distributions in USDT based on their qualifying balances at the record date.
That matters because tokenized securities are much easier to build than they are to maintain.
A product that tracks price but fails to account for dividends, splits and other corporate actions can drift away from the economics of the underlying asset.
Supporting distributions is part of making the wrapper behave more like the instrument it represents.
The announcement is less flashy than a new listing, but it is important infrastructure.
Tokenization has to handle the boring parts of securities ownership if it is going to scale.
In this case, four leveraged ETF bStocks will pass through cash dividend value to eligible users via USDT.
That still does not make the holders conventional registered shareholders.
But it does make the tokenized product more financially complete, and it shows Binance putting more operational machinery behind bStocks rather than treating them as simple price trackers.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Binance is expanding the part of its spot platform designed to run without a trader manually clicking every order.
The exchange has added new Spot Grid and Spot DCA bot support across additional trading pairs, with the new services taking effect on September 22.
Spot Grid bots place buy and sell orders across a predefined price range, while DCA tools automate repeated purchases according to user-set parameters.
Both are familiar strategies, but putting them directly inside an exchange lowers the barrier for users who would otherwise need third-party software or custom scripts.
The September 22 activation expands the number of markets where those tools can be used.
The word “bot” can make these products sound more intelligent than they are.
The tools execute rules.
They do not know where the market will go, and they do not guarantee profits.
A poorly configured grid can lose money in a strongly trending market, while a DCA strategy can continue buying into a falling asset.
The value is execution consistency rather than prediction.
For Binance, the expansion is another step toward making automated strategy tools a standard part of the retail exchange interface rather than a specialist feature used only by API traders.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Binance is adding another piece of conventional equity ownership economics to its tokenized-stock product.
The exchange says holders of SOXL bStocks will receive the cash dividend distribution tied to the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares product.
Eligible users are credited based on their qualified bStocks balance on the relevant record date.
The payment is distributed in USDT to spot accounts.
That is a useful test of how closely a tokenized equity product can mirror the financial experience of holding the underlying security.
Price exposure is the obvious part.
Corporate actions and cash distributions are harder.
If tokenized-stock products are going to function as more than synthetic price trackers, dividend handling has to work reliably.
The distribution does not turn bStocks into conventional brokerage-held shares.
Receiving an economic dividend is different from receiving voting rights, proxy materials or direct registration in the issuer’s shareholder records.
That distinction should remain clear.
Still, corporate-action support makes tokenized equities more complete as financial products.
SOXL is a leveraged ETF rather than a single company share, but the principle is the same: the token wrapper needs to track more than just price if users are going to treat it as a functional investment instrument.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
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